At the end of his first speech at TED2006, Al Gore announced that he was going to train a thousand people to give the climate change presentation he gave there – and which is at the core of his movie An Inconvenient Truth. That has turned into the Climate Project, and three training sessions have […]
Longtime TEDster Jeff Bezos, head of Amazon, has revealed video footage of an early test flight from his secret space project Blue Origin. The vertical take-off vehicle shown here blasted off gently on November 13th and reached a height of 285 feet before descending safely back to earth. The project’s goal is to lower the […]
TED2006 speaker Jamais Cascio has a very interesting way of considering cheeseburgers. He tries (in this post) to calculate their carbon footprint: how much carbon is produced in the process of cooking the burger, plus growing the feed for the cattle, growing and milling the wheat to make bread, growing the other ingredients, slaughtering and […]
It’s a new year and up at the Edge John Brockman is asking the now-traditional annual "big question", a wide-open query put to many smart people, mostly scientists from all disciplines. Last year John asked "What is your dangerous idea?". This year, he has somehow reversed the lens: "What are you optimistic about? Why?". 160 […]
TEDGlobal2007 speaker Ory Okolloh is one of those young Africans that graduated from Western universities and then went back home armed with degrees, tools, a vision and the intention to improve the state of their countries. The first time I met her I discovered a smart and driven woman who could really make a difference […]
The photographer Kristen Ashburn, whose unforgettable images of the human impact of AIDS in Africa made a powerful impact at TED a couple years back, has just opened her first public exhibition in New York. It’s stunning. For a taste, take a few minutes to watch this. Better yet, check it out in person at […]
For Thomas Dolby fans like us, there’s a lot to look forward to right now. Along with the highly entertaining blog he’s had for some time, TED’s music director just released a beautifully produced podcast series with excerpts from his extraordinary tour earlier this year. He’s also releasing a CD and DVD: “The Sole Inhabitant.” […]
Encounter Point, an incredible documentary that follows a former Israeli settler, a Palestinian ex-prisoner, a bereaved Israeli mother and a wounded Palestinian bereaved brother who risk their lives and public standing to promote a nonviolent end to the conflict, is opening in select cities in the US and the Middle East tomorrow. The film is […]
The Worldchanging book, “A user’s guide to the 21st century,” is published today. Our friends at Worldchanging.com in Seattle have been for a few years now publishing an insightful and inspiring collective blog disseminating information about sustainability and social change and describing pragmatically what’s possible, what new technologies are coming along, what solutions to the world’s global and local […]
Edward Burtynsky finds the eerie beauty in the man-made landscapes that dot our Earth’s surface. As a photographer who focuses on the relationship between humans and nature, he travels to the hidden corners of the Earth to document the way people are ravaging our planet. Below, 13 of his haunting images of altered nature. All […]
Courtesy of TEDster Bill Bragin, I had the good fortune to attend the premier of Stew’s show Passing Strange at Berkeley Rep earlier this week. Bill is the Director of Joe’s Pub, the influential music venue associated with The Public Theater in New York. Not only is Bill credited with building Joe’s Pub into the […]
After disrupting music distribution with file-sharing system Kazaa, and upsetting telecommunications with Voice-over-IP service Skype, TEDGLOBAL speaker Niklas Zennström and his accomplice Janus Friis have now set their sights on television. Their project is code-named "Venice". Little is known so far, but given their history, it’s likely to be based on peer-to-peer distribution technology. Their […]
British author and TEDGLOBAL speaker Charles Leadbeater has just released a first draft of his upcoming book for anyone to read and comment on. It’s called "We Think: Why mass creativity is the next big thing". I’m generally skeptical of "next big thing-isms", but Charles is an insightful analyst of the socioeconomic evolution. He has […]
Fifteen months after disseminating hints at TEDGLOBAL in Oxford, XPrize‘s Peter Diamandis and his posse are getting ready to annouce their plans for the first Rocket Racing League (RRL) races. The RRL is a racing competition akin to Nascar, with cars replaced by rocket-powered aircrafts called X-Racers that will zip around a virtual track in […]
TED partner Google is newly operating a separate search site: SearchMash. It was unveiled a few days ago, has a very simple homepage (no ads) and produces roughly the same results as the main Google search. But it also displays the top three relevant images, and has a few Ajax features that let you for […]
When the Best American books make their annual appearance each fall, it’s normally Best American Science and Nature Writing that pulls us in. The guest editor (this year: physicist Brian Greene) has inevitably spoken at Monterey, and the writers always include a stable of TED favorites. The titles in this ever-expanding franchise offer something for […]